1. Field Of The Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for forming a closure for a container which is both resistant to tampering and which will immediately indicate a violation of the contents.
2. Description Of The Prior Art
The need for tamper resistant or tamper evident seal closures on containers has arisen due to highly publicized incidents of tamperings in which consumers have been killed or injured by contents that have been poisoned. Tamper resistant closures are becoming a necessity for a wide range of containers, especially for those dispensing products intended for internal consumption. Such products include drugs and food products of various types that can be contaminated with toxics or poisons not readily evident to the potential user. While tamper resistant/tamper evident packaging designs have been in the past primarily directed to pharmaceutical and food packaging applications, such designs are now used to protect many other products, such as cosmetics and motor oil from alteration.
A wide variety of such tamper evident seal closures have been suggested in the prior art. Probably the most common is a seal made of foil that is glued across the top lip of the throat of a container. The breaking of such a seal is intended to indicate that the container has been opened and that the security of the container has been breached. However, it has been found that such seals can be removed by the application of heat, and then replaced without an indication of the tampering.
It is important that such tamper evident/tamper resistant seal closures be adapted to provide an indication that the contents of a container have not been tampered with, at least after the contents are initially sealed in the container by the closure means. At the same time it is generally necessary to provide in such a closure means a relatively simple construction, both to further assure reliable operation of the closure and also to make the use of the closure economically feasible.
It is the purpose of the present invention to present a tamper resistant/tamper evident seal closure that is simple in construction while being integrally mated to the container throat and providing immediate evidence to the consumer of tampering with the seal or contents.